


warm and salt

by brokenstars (asukaflying)



Category: AOA | Ace of Angels, 방탄소년단 | Bangtan Boys | BTS
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bathing/Washing, Coma, Emotions, Grief/Mourning, Haiku, Hospitals, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-04
Updated: 2016-01-04
Packaged: 2018-05-09 21:34:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5556230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asukaflying/pseuds/brokenstars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The tulips are pretty," he tells his sister, lying in the bed, quiet, the white sheets like hills and slopes of snow, untouched after the first snowfall.</p>
            </blockquote>





	warm and salt

**Author's Note:**

  * For [elfscouts_mod (tr1ptych)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tr1ptych/gifts).



> **Warnings:** hospitals, coma, emotions, grief  
>  **Notes:** The title is from [Tulips](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/178974) by Sylvia Plath.  
>  Listen to [Sonne](https://open.spotify.com/album/01tWqp96yZM73hu0vBooTF) by Rival Consoles while you read this.

 

_it was white outside_   
_the day you were reborn in_   
_this hospital bed_

 

There's a vase of red tulips sitting on the bedside table, their colour lush, striking crimson against the white wall. It reminds him of something else, something stickier, something that changed everything in a matter of moments.

"The tulips are pretty," he tells his sister, lying in the bed, quiet, the white sheets like hills and slopes of snow, untouched after the first snowfall. Seolhyun had liked skiing, going as a family, cheeks flushed and hearts racing, feeling so alive.

Taehyung reaches over to take her hand, holding it loosely in his own. Sometimes there's nothing to say, just a feeling that he holds beneath his skin, a kind of communication that doesn't resolve into words.

The ivory fabric of the curtain drifts gently; the glass isn't open in winter but the air from the register sends enough of a breeze to displace them, stirring up thoughts, stirring up words. Taehyung takes a deep breath; chokes.

It's not fair.

He can see Seolhyun, smile on her face, holding up the acceptance letter and shouting in excitement, her hair swirling as she turns her head, rippling like liquid, an ocean in motion. Now it lies flat, limp on the pillow, and only the curtains move.

He wants to stand up, walk over to the window and tear them down. They'd probably make a satisfying sound, the fibres ripping, fingers tangled up in threads, he a can almost feel the web twisting around his hands and is surprised to glance down and find them empty. His hand slipped away from her fingers.

Taehyung can't hold onto Seolhyun even though he wants to, no matter how far he runs his feet will never reach the bright dark where she's lost.

Taehyung blinks. The sun is shining in his eyes, the curtains no longer obstructing the sun. What treacherous things, though he's glad he didn't tear them apart, as he stands and walks around the bed to close them.

Glancing outside, he can see an ambulance driving up to the emergency, red flashing lights and the muted sound of a siren wailing, a facsimile of screaming that fades into nothing as it drives into the bay and out of sight.

He shuts the curtains, turns back to his sister, quickly, as though he might surprise her into moving the way they used to play when they were younger, hiding their eyes then whirling around all of a sudden to try to catch the stone gargoyles stretching their wings.

Seolhyun is still lying in the bed, hair black on the white pillow, face smooth and peaceful and completely empty of everything that makes her Seolhyun. Taehyung curls his hands into fists, fingernails digging sharply into the soft flesh of his palms; breathes.

The tulips on the bedside table are red, scarlet splashes on white, a violent colour that doesn't belong in the peace of the room.

Seolhyun doesn't belong in this room, but she's lying here anyway. Taehyung rounds the bed and sits back down in the chair, reaches out and wraps her limp fingers in his hand again. Her skin is soft.

 

_wondering, I reach_   
_out for reflections in a_   
_mirror I can't touch_

 

Taehyung sits at the table by the window, drumming his fingers against the wood. His cup is half full, or half empty, he's not sure, because even though it's the same thing it's still entirely different.

"Is she dead?" he'd asked with tears in his eyes, ignoring his own bruises and broken bones, minuscule in the face of this gaping hole in his chest.

"No," the doctor had replied, and his heart had leaped in his chest— "No, she's only sleeping."

The silence that had fallen, then, had been uncomfortable rather than expectant, and Taehyung had known even before he opened his mouth.

"When will she wake up?" he'd asked, because even though he knew the answer already, it wasn't the same as being told. _Maybe_ , he'd thought, _maybe this is all a bad dream._

"She might never wake up," the doctor had said, and Taehyung had stood there as the room spun and he tried to wrap his head around the idea that Seolhyun had, quickly, neatly, stepped sideways out of time.

Without asking.

"Sorry!" Taehyung looks up from the wood grain of the table. Jeongguk is weaving his way through the coffee shop, picking his way through the maze of other students in their post-holiday daze, the next set of deadlines not quite sunken in yet.

 _Deadlines are nice_ , Taehyung thinks, even as he meets Jeongguk's gaze and gives him a small smile. Today isn't a big smile day, or at least not at this moment. _A deadline for waking up._

"You're late," he says, and normally he'd pout or make a fuss but he just doesn't feel like it right now. His finger, tapping the table top, a steady beat like the beeping of a heart monitor. _Don't stop._

Jeongguk slows as he reaches the table, and sinks quietly into his chair, eyes a little wider than normal. Taehyung knows he's only trying to understand, but some things are too hard to explain. There's not enough water in the glass to share, and he takes another gulp.

"Class went late," Jeongguk says, and after a moment he reaches across the table to rest his hand on Taehyung's arm, just lightly, a pressure he could shrug off without blinking. He doesn't though, just tilts his head and watches the way Jeongguk's eyes shine when he talks about his animation class, and how his professor is encouraging him on a solo project.

"—and it's so interesting how changing the frames per second can change the smoothness of the motion," Jeongguk finishes, smiling now, and Taehyung smiles back without realizing it.

The barista calls Jeongguk's name, and Taehyung watches him jump up from the table and return with two steaming hot chocolates, with marshmallows just because Jeongguk always remembers that Taehyung likes them.

Jeongguk likes them, and it's the little things that matter more than the big things really. Taehyung takes a gulp of hot chocolate, ignoring Jeongguk's startled shout, "It's hot! You'll burn yourself!" as his mouth fills with sweetness.

His water glass might be half empty but the hot chocolate mug is full.

 

_snowflakes, whirling through_   
_the sky, landing on my tongue_   
_dissolve to nothing_

 

When he wakes up it's dark and he can't see anything at all. Taehyung blinks, staring wide-eyed at nothing, his heart racing in his chest, thumping louder and louder like he's trapped in a box and he can't get out, he's trapped in a—

with a sudden burst of fear he realizes that he's trapped, not in a box or a cage or dark room but in his body, he's in a coma and he's going to be stuck in here forever as he beats his fists against the dark that swallows him up, tangled in shadows that twist around his arms and legs and only bind him more tightly as he opens his mouth to scream and nothing comes out—

"Taehyung?"

He hears a voice, tries to concentrate as he flails harder and then all of a sudden everything hurts—

"Taehyung!"

He opens his eyes, really opens his eyes this time and sees Jeongguk peering at him, over the side of the bed, from where he's fallen off onto the floor.

"You had a nightmare," Jeongguk says, and Taehyung, skin sticky with sweat, fights the urge to roll his eyes, because of course he had a nightmare, heart still racing in his chest, mouth dry, but he's too tired to argue and all he wants is to curl back up in bed and never dream that dream ever again.

If only life was like that.

Instead, he pulls himself to his feet, elbows resting on the bed before he stands, resting the other hand on the wall as he slowly makes his way towards the bathroom, wincing as he walks and he's going to have some wonderful bruises in the morning.

There's a soft sigh, more like an exhalation of air, and as Taehyung flicks on the light he hears Jeongguk's feet padding over the wide boards of the floor, trailing fingers over his shoulder, just a ghosting touch as he slips into the bathroom ahead of Taehyung and starts drawing a bath.

"What are you doing?" Taehyung asks, and he's not sure if he's more tired or frustrated, mixing with the lingering claustrophobia of the dream to pull the corners of his mouth down into a frown as he slumps into the closed lid of the toilet, shivering now in his sweat-soaked pajamas.

Jeongguk just looks at him for a moment. "I'm running a bath," he says, and manages to smile almost brightly, even though he literally was pulled out of sleep by Taehyung thrashing around and falling out of bed.

"I'm too tired," Taehyung says, but he knows he's already lost when Jeongguk gets that firm set to the jaw and he _knows_ that a bath will help him unwind far better than a shower could.

When the tub is full, Jeongguk turns off the water and sits back on his heels at the side of the tub, waiting for Taehyung to slip out of his damp and crumpled nightclothes and sit in the warm water.

"I'm going to wash your hair and scrub your back," Jeongguk says, "And then you can dry off and we'll go to sleep.

Taehyung just nods, and leans his head back into Jeongguk's hands.

 

_this cold winter, my_   
_voice, frost on the window pane_   
_is gone by morning_

 

He doesn’t like the tulips, their stark redness, their reminder of everything that’s wrong, that Seolhyun hasn’t just fallen asleep only moments ago, but they’re drying in the vase and need fresh water.

Taehyung glances at himself in the mirror of the small washroom off the hallway. He looks a little tired, a little pale, but like himself. As the water runs into the glass, he makes a face at his reflection, sticking out his tongue and startling himself into a laugh he wasn't expecting.

"Who did you expect to see?" he asks himself, but he doesn't have an answer, his reflection shrugging as he can feel his shoulders lifting and falling. The glass is overflowing onto his fingers, and he shuts it off, wondering what Jeongguk sees when he looks at him.

As he walks back along the hallway, Taehyung thinks about what Seolhyun would say if she could see herself. Would she complain about the colour of the sheets, the contrast of her hair on the pillow? Would she laugh and say it didn't matter?

 _Where are you?_ Taehyung wonders, not for the first time, and not the last time either. 

He's thinking about the nightmare, the dark place, walls closing in, walls make of skin and bone and eyes that won't open and a mouth that can't speak, when he sees what Jeongguk has in his hands.

Sitting there, beside the bed, Jeongguk is flipping through the pages of his little black notebook with a curious expression on his face, and Taehyung feels so—

angry.

He thinks about Seolhyun, with her secrets and her dreams and the way she's both closed off to the world and yet intensely vulnerable, lying there in that hospital bed, and he thinks about the dream and the terrible feeling of suffocating helplessness and he looks at his own private book in Jeongguk's hands and—

his hands are gripping the glass of water so tightly that it's shaking, water slopping over the edge and he just—

lets go. Swinging an arm back, he feels the red rage, _red tulips_ , fill his hands as he throws the glass at the ground. It shatters, spilling water everywhere, the fragments of glass glittering in the sunlight, reminiscent of other glass, other wreckage, and he just feels—

empty.

Seolhyun is empty.

The red tulips are still sitting in the vase on the bedside table, slowly drying out, cut from the plant and clinging to the last threads of a life they can't keep.

"Are you okay?" Jeongguk's voice intrudes on his silence and he sounds scared, not of him as Taehyung fears for a shivering moment, but _for_ him. His eyes are wide, staring up at Taehyung, his brow furrowed.

Suddenly, Taehyung can't remember what he was angry about.

"I—yes," he says, fingers closing around empty air. The legs of his jeans are wet at the bottom, and when he steps, glass crunches beneath his feet.

Jeongguk sets the notebook down on the chair and they find a broom in the hall closet after asking a nurse, sweeping away the glass and using paper towels to mop up what remains of the water.

When it's all cleaned up, Taehyung perches on the wide ledge of the window sill, looking at Seolhyun. She's still sleeping.

Jeongguk sits down beside him, and rests a warm hand on his knee.

"I was going to ask if that was your notebook," Jeongguk says, "before the glass broke. I found it on the ground in the elevator when I came up, but it doesn't have your name."

Taehyung swallows. "Yeah, it's mine," he says, eyes still fixed on Seolhyun, and the way her chest rises and falls.

"I didn't really read them," Jeongguk continues. "But I'm sorry. I know they must be important to you."

Taehyung hears the words, lets them swirl around in his head. _Are they important?_ He's not sure, anymore.

"It's okay," he finally says, and sets his hand on top of Jeongguk's. "I know that. . .sometimes I don't know. . .I can't explain what I'm feeling. Sometimes I have to write it out."

"I wouldn't read your things," Jeongguk says, "not without your permission, even if I want to try to understand." He turns his head to look at Taehyung, who returns his gaze. Jeongguk's eyes are full of the late afternoon sun, but he doesn't look away.

"I know," Taehyung says. He smiles, and Jeongguk smiles back.

In the hospital bed, Seolhyun is still sleeping.

 

_your chest rises and_   
_falls. seasons turn as your breath_   
_escapes lungs. returns._

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt:  
>  _"I found you looking at my notebook." Person a uses writing to express emotions._


End file.
